Embodiments described herein relate generally to Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) networks, and, in particular, to implementing a Fibre Channel zone policy in a FCoE network.
Some known FCoE networks use a Fibre Channel switch (e.g., a Fibre Channel Forwarder (FCF)) to connect server and/or storage devices and enforce a Fibre Channel zone policy. In such FCoE networks, server and/or storage devices are typically connected to and logged in with an FCF either directly or through an FCoE Initialization Protocol (FIP) snooping bridge. Meanwhile, FCoE frames are typically transmitted to the FCF before they can be forwarded to the destined server and/or storage devices. Because an FCF can only handle a limited number of devices and/or frames, however, such FCoE networks are typically not scalable.
Some other known FCoE networks implement a Virtual Node (VN) Port to VN Port (VN2VN) deployment, where each server or storage device is allowed to connect to and communicate with each other in a peer-to-peer fashion, without the presence of an FCF. In such a VN2VN deployment, however, a Fibre Channel zone policy is typically provisioned to and enforced at each server or storage device, resulting in an additional provisioning and enforcement overhead at each server or storage device.
Accordingly, a need exists for methods and apparatus that can implement a Fibre Channel zone policy in an FCoE network without introducing additional forwarding-plane state information at end nodes besides that used for FIP-snooping.